Social networking sites have become an important means for people to interact with one another. Each user of a social networking site often creates a profile page on the social networking site. A user may typically configure his or her profile page to express the user's interests, educational information, employment information, and/or other personal information. In addition, a user may usually configure his or her profile page to include photographs, video clips, drawings, sound recordings, and other types of media.
After a user of a social networking site creates his or her profile page, the user may typically create a friends list that contains references to other users of the social networking site. People on a user's friend list may often view at least some of the user's profile page. In addition, the user may usually view profile pages of users on the user's friend list.
More recently, certain social networking sites have enabled users to embed small applications, known as widgets, into their profile pages. For example, a user can embed a widget that automatically compares favorite movies with friends' favorite movies. These widgets may usually be implemented in several ways. For instance, widgets may be implemented as ActiveX objects, Java Applets, Abode Flash™ objects, or otherwise. When a widget is embedded in a user's profile page, the widget may typically appear on the profile page. Continuing the example regarding the widget that compares favorite movies, the widget may list the number of favorite movies that the user shares with each of his or her friends.